


Play Me a Memory

by idelthoughts



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: Depression, Dragon Girls, Gen, Life After the Tower, Tiny Agnieszka is Wise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 09:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6700336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months after Janeska turned twenty-seven, the Dragon returned her to Dvernik.  Her ten years of comfortable solitude was over, and now she was back home.</p><p>Only, it wasn’t home anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play Me a Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [athenasdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/gifts).



> For AthenasDragon, who sent me a message that boiled down to: write literally any fic with Billy Joel's Piano Man as the prompt.
> 
> Since she was the one who got me to read Uprooted (and it was so incredible), I decided to try to venture a little into this fandom. No actual pianos featured, just lots of wondering how the road of your life ended up here when you thought it was all going so well.

Three months after Janeska turned twenty-seven, the Dragon returned her to Dvernik.

Janeska spent her ten years in the tower without complaint; ten years of learning to sew and cook, of reading books he set out for her, of dutifully practicing and mastering the curling script until her own writing was as neat and elegant as those set down within the texts in the Dragon’s library. She learned much, and truthfully, she didn’t resent it—not all of it. What she did resent, she put aside. She was content to learn, being on her own suited her, and after a few unpleasant brushes with the man, she figured out a pattern of living that helped her avoid the Dragon altogether.

But her ten years of comfortable solitude was over, and now she was back home.

Only, it wasn’t _home_ anymore.

Long before Janeska knew her what fate would bring, she’d witnessed one of the Dragon’s choosing days. She’d been seven, running with the children her age, quivering with excitement over knowing that the mythical Dragon would appear. She hadn’t yet understood that she would be in the next choosing, thanks to the year of her birth; she was still miraculously innocent and unburdened.

It was Lilijana, the milliner’s daughter, who was plucked from the line and spirited away into thin air. She left behind a howling mother, and a shivering, silent father, and a pack of siblings who wandered with hollow eyes and confusion. At near the same moment that Lilijana’s mother collapsed into wordless screams, a stranger walked into Dvernik—the girl from the last choosing, now become a woman. She was kind, but cold, with a regal air, wore a fine dress with a bag on her shoulder. Her auburn hair, plaited straight and shiny, was so similar in shade to Lilijana’s that it appeared Lilijana had miraculously aged a decade and returned instantly. Everyone was silent with confusion but for Lilijana’s crying mother.

The choosing day feast was meant to be in honour of a return as much as it was a goodbye, but it was impossible to see it as such. Lilijana’s departure was a fresh wound, whereas the returning girl—Janeska didn’t even know her name, hadn’t been born when she was gone—she was an old and quiet pain.

There was a reunion; soft smiles and gentle words, a hug, calm gathering together and touches to be sure she was real, but it felt wrong. Janeska hid under the table until dark fell, cramming honey cakes into her mouth and hiding more treats in her pockets, trying to erase the sound of laughter and weeping that mixed together like a song with a happy tune but sad words.

Ten years after that night, Janeska stood in the line of seventeen-year old girls herself, and a hot, hard hand closed around her and yanked her from her life.

Ten years after that, Janeska walked into Dvernik with a small bag on her shoulder, hair smooth and plaited, to be welcomed home by the fresh pain of a village mourning a lost daughter.

Now, Janeska tried so very hard to find her life again. It had never occurred to her that it would be difficult.

She’d loved Dvernik, loved her home there, loved helping milk the cows and preparing the milk for cheese, of carefully separating the whey, and working the rubbery curd until it was ready to be set for loaves and aged. It wasn’t that she had a great yearning to make cheese for her whole life, but there was such contentment in being part of her family and their generations-long traditions, of knowing she had a place of belonging in the little world of the valley, of all the connections that flowed through her into the others she loved, and back again.

Like the shears she’d used to cut cloth and sew her own clothes in the tower, the ten years had snipped and severed all those lines between her and her home.

Dvernik wasn’t home anymore, but it took almost a year for her to realize that.

Around her, friends spoke of dreams, of adventures they wanted to pursue, of hopes and fancies. But they spoke of them like they were wisps of smoke, as though one good puff of air would prove their impossibility. It didn’t bother them, didn’t pain them, only seemed a good game, harmless fun.

To Janeska, those dreams held more reality, more satisfaction, than anything she was doing now. Every day was drudgery, every action meaningless. The people here lived in fear, in the shadow of the woods and the horrors within, under the boot heel of the capriciousness of the Dragon’s random choosing, at the mercy of plague or famine or drought, whatever nature might inflict upon them next. Life in Dvernik was hard, miserable, rough… And yet they were all _happy_.

Janeska feared she’d lost the ability to be happy, had left it behind in the tower, lost amongst the Dragon’s endless library of books, pressed between pages that wouldn’t be opened again in lifetimes. She would flee to a spot by the river and hide her face in her skirts, pressing the cloth to her mouth to muffle her angry, frustrated screams and tears. Every day she worked, every day she talked and laughed with people who should be friends, family, lovers—and every day it felt more meaningless, more empty.

She was trapped in this life. If only she could find a way to be happy with what she had, if only she could stop dreaming and find _peace_.

Nearly a year after her return, as she rocked and cried herself out before sunset, as was nearly her daily routine now, the crack of a twig alerted her to company. She was sure many knew she came here like this, but everyone was a little frightened of her and her aloofness, and when she was in “one of her moods,” as her mother put it now, they all conspired to leave her alone; even on a busy market day she would find pockets of isolation in which to hide. They knew she didn’t belong, just as much as she did.

But today, a little pale face, smudged with dirt, and large eyes peeped at her from behind a tree. Agnieszka, one of the little girls born in a choosing year. Poor child, to grow up under that pall. Janeska hoped she was still in the childish phase of ignorance where she hadn’t realized yet. But she was eight, almost nine; she probably knew.

“Are you okay?” Agnieszka whispered. Janeska almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of the burbling water.

Janeska wiped the hem of her apron over her cheeks and eyes to dry them, and she nodded.

“I’m fine, little one. Go play.”

Agnieszka took this as invitation to approach, and she skipped through the grass and tumbled to a stop by Janeska’s side, plopping onto her knees and looking up into Janeska’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Agnieszka asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Janeska sighed, and with a smile stroked Agnieszka’s snarled dark hair back from her face, stopping to pluck a small bramble twig that had been caught up in it. Agnieszka wrinkled her nose at the small tweak of pain, but didn’t complain.

When she was young, Janeska thought about having children, about a daughter. If she’d stayed in the village, she might have one this age. Another lost thread, clipped along with the rest. It didn’t hurt, not anymore, but it was another reminder of how much she did not fit, did not belong.

“I’m not hurt,” Janeska said. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“Then why are you crying?” The child persisted, as though she couldn’t leave the mystery alone. She had a spark of life, of joy, shone like she belonged in this moment, while Janeska was only the shadow of a conversation partner. “Maybe you are hurt and you don’t know it. Sometimes I get a thorn in my foot, or a scratch on my leg, and don’t know until nightfall, and then I see the blood.”

Her earnestness was enough to make Janeska laugh, and she chucked Agnieszka under the chin.

“Little one, go home. I will be fine, thank you.”

Agnieszka was silent, obviously conflicted, but did as she was told and stood up to go. She paused, hands fisted in her skirts to pull it up out of the grass, and turned back to Janeska, uncertain.

“You always come here to cry,” she said, spitting the words out as though courage might fail her if she didn’t speak as fast as she could. “If this place makes you so sad, maybe you should go somewhere else. Somewhere happier.”

And then, she turned and ran, sprinting towards the woods and disappearing into the brush like a sparrow, only a crackle of leaves marking her passage before even that was swallowed by the sound of the flowing water.

Janeska dropped her hands into her lap, startled by a simple thought that had never occurred to her. Agnieszka meant this little spot of riverbank, this dappled sunlit spot, but it was all of Dvernik, all of the valley that made her sad.

She could _leave_ it.

The first time Janeska left it had been by force, had been ten years made to live in the tower with the Dragon, cottoned in by stone and tapestry. She’d never have gone willingly, and never, ever thought that returning would be anything other than a homecoming.

But if the tower wasn’t home, and Dvernik wasn’t home…

Maybe she should go find where home was.

Flickering bits of dreams and ideas leapt to life, fuelled by the possibility of exploration. She could leave Dvernik, maybe walk to the next village. Maybe she could go to the capital city, and see some of the fantastic things she’d read about in the Dragon’s books. She could read even more there, learn the history of the city, the country, learn more about the courts she’d seen paintings of…

She was on her feet and headed for her parents’ house without even having thought about it, her pace close to a run, grass and twigs catching at her skirt as she tore through the brush by the river’s edge to get to the main road.

She’d lingered here too long, stuck in this place where dreams were watered down by a life she was no longer meant to live, that held no satisfaction. And now that she saw the truth, the key, her heart swelled. The only thing that was keeping her dreams from her was herself.

And so, like all the Dragon girls before her, Janeska left Dvernik.


End file.
